Is This the Sanest Man Running for President?

With Gary, and it's okay to call him Gary, it's not so much the things he says and does that are spectacularly unusual (or spectacularly misguided, depending on your point of view) for a presidential candidate. It's the things he doesn't say and do.

Like now. He's in a bike shop in Hooksett, New Hampshire. Elsewhere in this fine state, Mitt Romney has been back and forth, back and forth, being his robotic self. Shaking hands, slapping backs, lifting babies, smiling. Sarah came through on her bus tour. Even Ron Paul has been doing the hustle at donor house parties.

Gary? He's talking about bikes. Weight and tire pressure. He's telling the guys at the store that he needs to rent one for some race he's in (a charity race for disabled children). His two aides, Brinck and Matt—who constitute his entire paid New Hampshire staff—give him the look. The one that says: Maybe you should mention you're running for frickin president. But Gary's on to pedals now. He brought his own pedals with him from New Mexico. Would have taken the whole damn bike, but it would've cost too much to fly it here.

The bike-store guys slip him a form to fill out and ask him for his driver's license. Gary forks it over. They eyeball it. Not a glimmer of recognition. ("Nobody recognizes me," he later explains, nonchalantly. "Ever.") Now they need to put a charge on his credit card, in case he doesn't bring the bike back.

That does it.

"Uh, you don't have to worry about me jilting you on your bike here," he tells them. "I'll be screwed if I steal your bike. 'Cause, see..." Brinck and Matt lean in. Is it coming? You can do it, Gary! " 'Cause, see...for what it's worth, I'm, uh...if you want to make a note..." This is painful. "Uh, I'm running for president of the United States."

"Huh," says one of the bike guys. It's New Hampshire! What's another dude running for president? "I'll need you to read all the fine print and sign it here," the bike guy continues. And they still need to charge his credit card.

"Of course," says Gary. He's very big on fairness.

The guys send Gary downstairs to have his seat adjusted. Five minutes later, they follow him down the steps.

"You did," says Gary. It's more of a statement than a question. In fact, he wants to legalize marijuana, but not because he still smokes the stuff.

He's fiddling with the bike. But they want to know more about Mount Everest. And how he plans to fix the economy. And handle the deficit. "This is what I love about New Hampshire," says Gary, and happily outlines his main—and most radical—position: to slash the federal budget by 43 percent. That's the number it would take to erase the deficit right now. This can be done, he says. Ya think? And he'd do it by, among other things, eliminating the Department of Education (he says he'd give all those billions to the states, minus 43 percent, and let them decide what's best, because "this whole idea that Washington knows best? That's why we're bankrupt"); bringing our troops home, particularly from all peaceful countries (he thinks it's absurd that we have tens of thousands of troops in Europe); and "rebooting" the federal tax code with a "fair tax" that would abolish the entire IRS ("Imagine that!") and would tax consumption, not income, "because it's, well, fair."

Now the bike-store guys want to know whether he thinks he can beat Obama. "My contest is in the primary," he tells them.

"That sucks," says one of the guys.

"Yes, it does. But life's a journey."

He squeezes the tires. "Looks good." Then he lifts the bike and carries it up the steps. He is halfway out the door to the parking lot when suddenly he stops and turns around. "Listen," he says, "I only mentioned that president thing so you wouldn't think I'd steal your bike." Brinck and Matt simultaneously roll their eyes. He's apologizing for mentioning "that president thing"?!

A few things you need to know up front about Gary Johnson. There is nothing he will not answer, nothing he will not share. For six straight days, we spent virtually every waking hour together, which might have had something to do with the fact that there wasn't another reporter within ten miles of the guy. Or that when you're polling in the low digits and your campaign fund is less than Mitt Romney's breakfast tab and your entourage is Brinck and Matt, you tend to be more forthcoming. But in fact, Johnson is fundamentally incapable of bullshitting, which is one of the many, many things that make him so unusual for a presidential candidate. (When a reporter asked him, after he gushed about how great New Hampshire voters are, if he says the same thing in Michigan, he replied, "No, Michigan's the worst.") He finds presidential politicking of the sort we've grown accustomed to—slick, scripted, focus-grouped, how-does-the-hair-look—to be "absolutely phony."

Another thing you need to know: He was never supposed to be the fringe candidate, and his campaign is no lark. Before he officially declared, he visited thirty-eight states—on his own nickel—to get a sense of whether he'd be a viable candidate. He was the first GOP candidate to announce, in early April, and for about twenty seconds seemed like a contender. The wildly popular (still) two-term Republican governor from a state that is two-to-one Democrat. A guy who's confident that he knows how to manage the purse strings and balance a budget because he did it—eight years in a row—in New Mexico. His fiscal conservatism is unmatched by anyone in the race. And his socially liberal cred—the only pro-gay and pro-choice Republican candidate—is unmatched even by some Democrats. (Of course, while this could be an asset in the general election, it's a bitch of a liability in the GOP primary.) Even the backstory had a self-made charm: Born fifty-eight years ago in Minot, North Dakota, the son of a tire salesman turned teacher and a mom who worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Johnson started a one-man handyman operation when he was 21, grew it into a construction company with a thousand employees, and sold it in 1999 for about $5 million. Oh, and he named it Big J (for Big Johnson). "It didn't have the same connotation at the time," he swears.

But still. Do not confuse his Zen-like quality for a lack of cojones. The guy has brass ones. He's a five-time Ironman triathlete. He paraglides and hot-gas balloons. (Not hot air, hot gas.) He biked across the Alps. And from the right angle, he looks like Harrison Ford.

So what on earth is so radioactive about Gary Johnson? And how did he become Nowhere Man in a field as chaotic and uninspired as this one?

···

The desk clerk at the Econo-Lodge in Lincoln, New Hampshire, wants to know how to spell Johnson.

Gary is beyond cordial. He spells it out. Doesn't even mention that he is Gary Johnson, presidential candidate. Just politely forks over two credit cards—one that belongs to the campaign (to pay for Matt and Brinck's accommodations) and one that is his own (since he is paying for as much as possible with his own money).

"Sorry, sir," says the clerk. The campaign credit card has been declined.

"Aw, shit," says Gary. And tells him to put everything on his own Visa. Then the clerk gives him a coupon for a free Econo-Lodge breakfast in the morning. "Well, that's very nice of you. I appreciate that."

The man is frugal beyond belief. "But I am not cheap." As his fiancée, Kate Prusack, a real-estate agent in Santa Fe, points out, "Yes, he shops at Costco, but he drives a Porsche." He built his own house in Taos but paid premium to put a hot tub in. And he tips well, a telltale difference between men who are careful with money and cheap bastards. He likes to think he spends his own money (he says he's worth about $6 million) the way he'd spend the country's money: Pay only for quality and don't waste a cent. Like, for instance, stop pissing away money on border patrols and erecting fences and walls across the Mexican border, and let immigrants earn work visas "and actually contribute to our economy." And while he's on the topic of wasteful spending, he says there'll be no pleasure trips to the Vineyard on Air Force One.

He has just enough time to check into his room and change into his evening attire—jeans and Nike Frees with bright orange shoelaces—before grabbing a quick bite ("I'll have the Nasty Nachos," he tells the waitress) and heading to the Porcupine Freedom Festival, an annual summit of over-the-top Libertarians who come by the thousands to camp out for a week and "exchange ideas." Not to mention joints. And Gary is attending this "civilly disobedient" event...why, exactly? "You'll see," says Gary. "It'll be an eye-opener."

That's one way of putting it. But what's most bizarro-world about Porcfest is that there's a presidential candidate in attendance and no one seems to know it. Gary doesn't ask to take the stage (or make his aides get him up there). He doesn't glad-hand. He just slips in and watches a Libertarian documentary (Matt's in it) from the back of the mud-floored tent/makeshift auditorium. But then word spreads through the crowd—and the aromatic air—that Gary Johnson is here. And they come to him. "Are you Gary Johnson? Awesome, dude." Some of them remember him from last year, when he also showed up without fanfare. "I think the last time we met, I didn't have eyeliner on," says one sexually ambiguous Libertarian. Another invites him to the Shabbat dinner tonight in someone's tent. He has a long jag with several young guys in Ron Paul T-shirts, who tell him that they like him a lot but will probably vote for Paul, even though he has not appeared at Porcfest. Gary tells them they should do what they feel is right. One of them suggests he could be Ron Paul's vice president. (Not likely. Gary flew to Houston to tell the Libertarian capo in person that he planned to run; the meeting ended when he announced his intentions.)

A local public-radio guy and a local blogger ask if he would mind being interviewed, and they retreat to a smelly back hallway near the men's room, where he answers questions about his campaign for the presidency while various revelers walk by with bongs and guns.

"A lot of people would say it's a courageous candidate," says the radio guy, "who would come to an event where people are walking around openly carrying weapons, there's gay disco, there's people smoking marijuana..."

In fact, though Paul ducks the entire week of Porcfest (but somehow manages to have piles of his T-shirts there), Gary returns for a second night and spends three hours wandering the campground. The only group he approaches directly is sitting under a tent at a picnic table with RON PAUL MEETUP signs. Then he moves south to the part of the campground dominated by the anarchists, who are separated from the Libertarians by a swing set—and who, by definition, aren't even going to vote. But Gary doesn't want to just blow them off. He ends up in a long conversation with a guy named "Puke" and another dude in a red hoodie who wants to tell the presidential candidate how he became "the sovereign king of myself." Gary listens as the 20-year-old tells him how he doesn't pay tas and drives without a license. "I understand how you feel, but listen, son..." And gently but firmly points out that those things could get him arrested. "That wouldn't be good for you."

Matt and Brinck want to know if he's ready to go.

"I thought we might go hear a little bit of rant first." There is open-mike ranting under a tent tonight, and he really enjoyed that last year.

···

Okay, so maybe it's fairly easy for the mainstream media, and even the weirdstream media, to write Gary Johnson off. He doesn't fit the script. Not any script. But as Gary would ask, how successful has the script been? In fact, the Gary Johnson story is about a lot more than a highly unusual candidate. It's also a window into the arbitrary, screwed-up way we pick our candidates. Or rather, the way a small number of major media outlets—rather than the voting public—decree who the "legitimate" candidates will be.

It's hard to put too fine a point on the "unintended consequences" (one of Johnson's favorite phrases) of CNN's decision in June not to invite Gary Johnson to its debate, the second of the Republican primary campaign. He was just picking up some steam, having turned in a very respectable performance in the first debate in May, hosted by Fox. At least enough to make people say, Who is this guy? "Then I got hosed," as Gary puts it.

It wasn't just that CNN chose not to invite a widely respected two-term governor who'd officially declared his candidacy ahead of everyone else and had a PAC (Our America Initiative) and a serious campaign committee up and running. The network invited Sarah Palin (who has yet to announce and may never), as well as Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee, both of whom announced that they weren't running in the weeks before the debate. CNN says the invitation list was based entirely on who was polling at least 2 percent in three polls they used as a basis—and that Huckabee and Trump were invited before they dropped out. (And Palin? That was just wishful thinking.)

Johnson insists that even by CNN's criteria, he should have been on the stage. "We argued till we were blue in the face that in those polls they cited, I was actually at the 2 percent," says the candidate. "It didn't do any good."

The reaction from the Johnson camp was fast and furious—and amusing. His supporters (yes, he has them) showed up outside the CNN debate with signs that read MORE JOHNSON, LESS WEINER. Gary himself took to YouTube to do a forty-three-minute video in which he answered every debate question, splicing in the actual video of John King's questions. Johnson says he purposely did not watch the debate until after he made his video, so that his answers would be pure and honest.

In the short term, Johnson got a little bump from being dissed by CNN. There was an uptick in (small) donations for a few days. But the long-term consequences were dismal. As Joe Hunter, his communications director in Utah, puts it, "In terms of any momentum and the ability to motivate larger donors, it was a blow from which we are just now starting to recover." (And yes, Gary's national operation is based in Utah, because he refuses to stray from Ron Nielson, the Salt Lake City–based consultant who helped him win his two terms as governor, though Nielson has never run a presidential campaign before.) Almost immediately, says Hunter, the campaign had "fewer requests from the major outlets for reactions to national developments. There were exclusions from polls—which is obviously a vicious cycle—and generally less attention from the major networks than Gary's credentials would merit." Johnson admits he was "demoralized" by the decision. For the quarter ending June 30, a period during which Mitt Romney raised $18 million, Johnson netted $180,000 (not a typo).

And the vicious cycle continued. In August, he was not invited to the Republican debate in Iowa. Which might have had something to do with his response to the "Family Leader's "Marriage Vow" pledge," a social-conservatism manifesto that Michele Bachmann and several other of his rivals jumped to sign. "In one concise document," Gary said in a YouTube video, "they manage to condemn gays, single parents, single individuals, divorcees, Muslims, gays in the military, unmarried couples, women who choose to have abortions, and everyone else who doesn't fit into a Norman Rockwell painting."

Um, maybe not the best way to appeal to the base.

Then, in early September, he got hosed again by CNN, deemed not even worthy to participate in the reality-show carnival that was the Tea Party debate. Two weeks before the debate, he was polling higher than Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum. They were onstage. He was not.

"I never, ever, when I entered this process of running for president of the United States, thought I would be excluded from the debate table. Ever." He pauses, incredulous. "What does two terms as governor get you?"

Finally, in mid-September, he qualified for the Fox debate in Orlando. Over the two-hour debate, he was asked four questions and scored a total of four minutes airtime. "I'm not complaining," he said afterwards. "That's four minutes more than I had a week ago." He seemed nervous (he was), his answers repetitive. But he pulled it out at the end by delivering the applause line of the night: "My next-door neighbor's two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this current administration." Suddenly he was trending on Twitter and, for a day, was one of the hottest search terms on Google. He says he kinda wished his dogshit joke wasn't what got him national attention. But he'll take it.

···

The funny thing is, Johnson's eight years in the governor's mansion, from 1995 to 2003, once seemed as unlikely as his presidential aspirations do now. When he ran for the first term, he had almost zero name recognition. His campaign cost $1.8 million, and $550,000 of that was his own money. He won the Republican nomination by 1 percent and ended up winning the general (with a third Green Party candidate) by 10 percent. Four years later, he was reelected with 55 percent of the vote.

Voters will tell you that the reason Johnson got reelected (and might still be in office if there hadn't been term limits) was that he managed to improve the state while slashing the budget. He vetoed 750 spending bills, knew how to strong-arm the Democratic-controlled state house and senate, and reinvented the state agencies. He also signed a bill to let New Mexicans drive seventy-five miles per hour on highways, and another one to let them buy beer on Sundays. ("Why not? That's a stupid rule. People can make their own decisions about what day of the week they want a beer.") And when litter became a problem on the highways, he organized a bike race from one end of the state to the other in which, in his Pearl Izumi spandex, he led a flotilla of New Mexicans to collect the garbage.

One point that Johnson often makes—and that he argued passionately to CNN producers when they were wrangling over his exclusion from that critical debate in June, before Rick Perry joined the race—is "that there's only one presidential candidate that's viewed favorably in their own state. And that would be me. So what I said to CNN was, 'You're talking about a 2 percent threshold—which we can argue—but in the only place where I am known, I have this favorability rating. So shouldn't that mean something? Isn't a debate supposed to be about presenting all the candidates to the rest of the United States and let the people determine who they like and dislike?" (He likes to point out that Bill Clinton was also polling at 2 percent in the nascent stages of his first presidential campaign.)

I get a chance to see Johnson soak up some of that home-state love when I go to Albuquerque with him in late June. There's a sudden lightness to Gary as he strolls through the airport. For one thing, people know him here. "Hey, how ya doin', Governor?" He drags his stuff to the economy parking garage where his silver Porsche Targa waits. "Targa is the hatchback," he explains. "It's the practical Porsche."

He slips on his Nike sunglasses. "You can't go anywhere in New Mexico without your shades."

Now he is at the parking-cashier booth and wants to make sure the woman who takes his ticket notices that he has a coupon. "I got the seven-day free there."

"You're the governor, right?" says the woman. And she pulls out a box and hands it to him through the window. "They wanted me to give you this. That's a transponder. You can park for free anytime you want."

"Oh man!" says Gary. "That is so cool!" He looks like he's about to jump out and kiss her. He asks her for her name, for the manager's name, for the owner's name. So he can send them thank-you notes. "This is just so cool. Thank you so much. Wow! Wow!"

We pull onto the highway, where, because of him, you can now drive seventy-five miles an hour. Or maybe much faster? "What do you think? It's a Porsche."

"I think that was an omen, huh?" he says, doing eighty-five. The transponder? "What they're saying is, 'Go get em!' I feel good about this thing. I have a good feeling."

He dials his fiancée. "Prusack, I LOVE YOU!"

He has to stop at Home Depot to buy a weed torch and at Costco for the grocery order. "I love Costco." He runs as he pushes his cart. "Hello, Mr. Johnson!" "Hello, Governor!" "How's the race going?" The only bummer is that they are out of the Starbucks cards where you can get $100 worth of coffee for $80. But otherwise, life is good. And will get better.

He meets Kate and his family at a restaurant. When he sees Kate in the parking lot, he embraces her like he just got out of prison.

The following morning, he is the guest speaker at a packed breakfast meeting at the Hotel Albuquerque (which he owns part of). During his twenty-seven-minute speech, he gets a rousing standing O and is interrupted with extended applause four times. (The home crowd doesn't seem to mind his low-key speaking style, which once prompted a Wall Street Journal columnist to call him "the libertarian Michael Dukakis.") He talks about how he will balance the federal budget by 2013, repeats his mantra about cutting federal spending by 43 percent. And how, at his core, he's a free-market guy. Free markets for health care, for education, for energy. He talks about alternative energy (good) and ethanol subsidies (bad). Then he throws in the legalize-pot stuff at the end, and there is less applause. One businessman whispers to me, "That's a tough issue to get elected on."

Gary Johnson believes in his heart that Americans want the truth. But do they? Legalizing marijuana to significantly reduce the prison population and save the billions spent every year going after pot smokers in the "war on drugs" (a view that more and more Americans share, just not those who vote in Republican primaries) is hardly his main issue; eliminating the deficit is, and was even before the debt crisis this summer. But he's been marginalized as the pot guy."I believe at some point the media will move beyond this," he says, "but I'm not laying on the couch theorizing about it." Advisers have suggested he cut his speeches before that kicker—legalize pot—while he still has audiences vigorously nodding over his ideas to get rid of the deficit and the IRS. But that would be, well, phony. "I don't want them to go home and say, 'I saw this guy Gary Johnson, and he was really interesting.' 'Oh, the pot guy?' 'He didn't mention that.' "

The Albuquerque breakfast is a very well-heeled gathering of the top businesspeople in New Mexico, and even those who go off the record—usually because they're Dems—have nothing but praise for their former governor. "He was very effective from the start," says one prominent Democrat who is also a developer. "Because of what he did for our economy. And lemme tell ya, he's tough. You know that single-minded toughness that makes you a great triathlete?"

"This man is a genius!" says a businesswoman who runs over to kiss him. "You look fabulous!" she gushes. "Why don't you age?"

The chairman of the group, who introduces him, tells a story about hiring the teenaged Gary to paint his house after watching the future governor fall in love with the girl next door (Johnson's ex-wife, Dee, who died at 54, months after they divorced). "Gary has never not achieved something he set out to achieve, from governor to Ironman. And in typical Gary Johnson fashion, he's at the back of the pack, where he loves to start out."

···

Oh, right. The pack. Gary takes great pride in the fact that in his two successful runs for governor, he never once mentioned his opponents by name. That's a little harder to do now. While he has been persona non grata, he has watched as first Bachmann, then Huntsman, and now Perry have each been treated like the Second Coming. Huntsman, in particular, fascinates Gary. And in a weird way, gives him hope. The Utah zillionaire has Annie Leibovitz photographing him for Vogue but is still polling in Gary-territory—worse than Gary territory! Johnson is a point or two above him in the polls right now—despite Huntsman plowing millions of his own money into his campaign and gracing numerous magazine covers. Maybe the media isn't all that powerful!

Gary was in New Hampshire when Huntsman rolled out a series of slick TV ads in which not a word was spoken. The ads showed a very cool-looking dude motorbiking through the desert. (In fact, the guy wasn't even Huntsman.) Gary found this hilarious. "It's not even a real bike!" he chortles. "It has a key."

Gary rides the kind of bikes you pedal. Across entire states. And mountain ranges. Also, he doesn't merely climb mountains—he's made it to the top of four of the famous Seven Summits, the highest peaks on each continent. "Three more to go," says Gary. Late one night, in an expansive mood, he ponders whether "when I become president," it would be feasible to cross one or two more mountains off his list. Is he on crack? Americans fret about injury when their presidents play golf. And can you imagine the Secret Service as Sherpas? "Yeah, you're probably right," says Gary. "But I'll still be young enough—67, 68—when I leave office to do the other three." (Yes, he just elected himself to two terms.)

Twice he broke his back but continued to compete in marathons, bike races, the usual. His worst mishap was in 2005, toward the end of his governorship, when he crashed while paragliding off the highest mountain in Maui and fractured three vertebrae and broke six ribs. "Man, I was gonna fly to the sun! I thought I was Icarus. And I was." It was the injury that put him out of commission for a good couple of years, during which he smoked pot to ease the pain. (He gave it up recreationally, along with booze, thirty-three years ago, at the age of 25, when both started to affect his prowess on the ski slopes.)

It is somewhere in the wilds of New Hampshire, in the back of the Suburban, that he tells his Mount Everest story. After reaching the top of the highest peak on the planet, he and his buddy Dave high-fived, wallowed in the exhilaration, then began their descent. They came to "what we call 'the fin,' the most precarious point in the ice fall; it's like a fifty-foot ladder of ice. And there's this huge crash of ice. Dave is visibly shaking, and Dave doesn't visibly shake. So the fin is gonna collapse, and we're on top of it, and we're gonna die. That's just that. Well, it turns out it didn't collapse—"

Wait a minute, that's just that? Weren't you terrified? Did you pray? "Well, no. It was just a holy-shit moment."

He returned from Everest with such severe frostbite on the toes of his left foot (the broken leg impeded circulation) that he incurred three surgeries, and the toes are still not right. "Wanna see?" he asks, and removes his sneaker and his little ped sock.

That's gnarly.

"I know."

He has no feeling in his big toe. Which is a little weird when he's pedaling. But he did it. He climbed Mount Fucking Everest with a broken leg. So you think anemic polling numbers and a tiny campaign chest is gonna spook this guy?

And yet. It is hard to spend time with Gary Johnson without wondering, every step of the way: WHY? Why bother? He doesn't particularly crave attention. He doesn't have any ulterior motives for, say, the vice presidency or a cabinet post. He's a pro-choice, pro-immigration Republican who wants to legalize pot, for chrissake. He also has a pretty sweet life. Back in Taos, his gorgeous fiancée looks like Annette Bening and climbs mountains with him. He has two grown kids. His son, Erik, is taking a year off from his tech job in Denver to work on his dad's campaign. His daughter Seah is in the theater and climbed with him to base camp at Everest. Both do the sports thing with Dad. All four of them—Gary, the kids, the girlfriend—summited Mount Kilimanjaro together a few months after he and Kate started dating. So really, why bother?

Gary will tell you it's because he believes in what he believes in and that he really thinks he can win. He games it out for me: He just needs to catch on like he did in New Mexico; he's like most of America, which is to say fiscally conservative and socially liberal; the majority of Republicans agree with him on social issues, even though they are not the ones who vote in primaries, yet; the other ones will cancel each other out; and so on. But the real question might be, why not? Perhaps the man just has an extraordinary bucket list: Start a business from scratch, climb Mount Everest, run for president...

The closest he comes to admitting that this might be a kamikaze mission is late one night at the Econo-Lodge, as he's about to enter his dreary $89 room. "You do realize this could go nowhere, right?" But hey, life's a journey.

···

One morning toward the end of our New Hampshire trip, Gary is standing in the hotel parking lot, shaved, refreshed, and ready to roll. He's in a T-shirt and Wrangler jeans ("Got these for $11.99 at Walmart") and his Tag Heuer watch. He also wears a wedding band, always, "though for now it's an engagement band."

We pile into the Suburban for the two-hour drive to Manchester for the grand opening of his New Hampshire campaign office. This is a rather important event, since he is putting "all my chips on the table" in the Granite State, where he has already been sixteen times and has vowed to return every week or so until the primary in February. Even after the dismal $180,000 fund-raising figure comes out, he insists he's in it for the long haul. "I really believe all of this is going to turn out great," he cheerfully writes in an e-mail reply. "You must be thinking of someone else regarding 'dropping out.' Thanks, Gary.' " His strategy is to pretty much skip Iowa and emerge as some superstar dark horse in New Hampshire, where, let's face it, stranger things have happened.

"What's the attire for this evening?" Gary asks, referring to the opening of the campaign office.

"I would say we should dress nicely," says Brinck. "I would wear a suit." Several hours later, he's checking into the Manchester Hilton Garden Inn, which is quite an upgrade from the Econo-Lodge. He has stayed here almost every time he has visited the state since declaring his candidacy. "Name, please?" says the desk clerk.

Later that evening he is in a suit—and a tie Kate picked out for him—waiting for people to show up for the big event. There are two large jars on the folding table with handwritten signs that say DONATIONS.

"Oh, very nice," says Gary.

Eventually the small room fills up, to about twenty people. Gary is delighted.

The next day, he has a full day of radio and print interviews with various New Hampshire outlets. And he is rather impressive and his usual candid self, particularly on the economy—that is, if anyone ever hears or reads his answers. That afternoon, he returns to his campaign headquarters to finish off some of the cheese and pepperoni and blueberry juice from the night before, and says he wishes he could be a fly on the wall after those interviews. "I'll bet they liked me. Because they have to interview all these other cats, and the other cats don't answer stuff. All they talk about is 'America's greatness.'"

On the way back to the Hilton, Brinck pulls over at a gas station to fill the Suburban. Gary gets out to pump the gas. "That's how he rolls," says Brinck. But the campaign credit card gets denied. Again. "Let's try $50 instead of $100," says Gary. Nope. "This is just painful." Two hours later: He walks off the elevator at the Hilton, chewing a toothpick, dressed in a suit. I make the mistake of telling him that the latest cover of Time has every Republican candidate but him on it. He is crushed.

Late that night, he stops at the desk on the way back to his room to ask for a 3:45 A.M. wake-up call to catch an ungodly early flight back to New Mexico.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (effective 1/4/2014) and Privacy Policy (effective 1/4/2014).The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with prior written permission of Condé Nast.